It is often difficult to find the best places to eat when traveling. Google Reviews are often inaccurate and point you to restaurants that you weren’t really looking for. We have been in Bucerias for over a month, for the past 4 years, and have tried many of the restaurants. Bucerias has a lot of…
Galapagos on a Budget
I wasn’t sure that we could make the Galapagos work without breaking the bank. Most foreign tourists are seeing the islands on small “liveaboard” cruise ships. But those cruises are running about $1000 per day per couple for the 4-8 night cruises. The Ecuador political crisis this year caused a lot of people to cancel…
My Favorite Towns in the World
We have returned again to Bucerias, Mexico for a 5 week stay. This will be the 4th year in a row that we will have spent at least a month in Bucerias. Last fall I wrote a post about how we didn’t know how to answer the question- Where is your favorite place? I have…
Panama City, Panama
This is going to be a short post because we only spent 3 nights here. It felt even shorter than that because we were wiped out from 3 travel days in a row (ferry from Isabella Island to Santa Cruz Island on one day, flight from Galapagos to Guayaquil the next day, and flight from…
Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador
We were on Isabela Island for our 2nd week on the Galapagos. Isabella is just a bit bigger than the big island of Hawaii but only 3000 people live there and they almost all live in the village of Puerto Villamil (also called Isabela). We took a 2 hour boat to get there from the…
Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos, Ecuador
Our first stop in the Galapagos is the most populated island Santa Cruz and we stayed in the biggest town Puerto Ayora. Santa Cruz is bigger than the island of Maui but it still only has 20,000 fulltime inhabitants. Many people that visit the Galapagos do it on a liveaboard small cruise ship (usually about…
Curacao
Yes, we had a Dushi time during our 2 weeks in Curacao. Dushi is kind of a catch all “good” word that people us for a variety of uses similar to “Aloha” in Hawaii or “Lekker” in South Africa. People used “Dushi” describing good food, weather or a fantastic beach, as well as meaning lovely….
Medellin, Colombia
Medellin was the most dangerous city in the world not too long ago. The thought of tourists coming to visit would have been unthinkable in the 90’s. Now it is a popular place on the South American tourist route for European and American travelers. It is also becoming a favorite spot for digital nomads because…
Minca, Colombia
Sometimes we need a break from being tourist in big cities and we planned 5 days in the small town of Minca, which is quite the contrast from our stays in Bogota, Cartagena and Medellin. Minca is a small hippy town in the jungle hills above Santa Marta. There are many hostels filled with European…
Cartagena, Colombia
We were a little overwhelmed by the big city of Bogota… but not Cartagena. It is more our style. It is still a big city with a lot of high rise apartments and hotels along the beaches but we stayed mostly in the old walled city. It is an active neighborhood called Getsemani with waves…
Bogota, Colombia
We made it to Colombia! Our first week is in the capitol city of Bogota which sits at at 8500ft elevation. We had been around 5000 feet for most of our Guatemala adventures, but this new elevation still takes a bit of getting used to walking up the hills. We stayed at a $50 per…
Costa Rica vs Guatemala
In late 2023, we spent 6 weeks in Costa Rica and were torn between enjoying the beautiful nature of the country while dealing with the downsides of traveling in the country. I wrote this post about how while it can be challenging to travel in Costa Rica, the benefits far outweigh the negatives and it…
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Our next stop in Guatemala was Lake Atitlan. It is a lake at 5000 feet surrounded by several volcanos. We stayed at the town of San Pedro La Laguna which is a 3 hour drive from Antigua on a really curvy road that gets as high as 10,000 feet. The lake has several little towns…
50 years ago in Guatemala
In 1974, my mom took me (5 yrs old) and my brother (3 yrs old) on the Amtrak train from Tacoma, Washington to Los Angeles and dropped us off at our grandparents house in Van Nuys, California to spend a couple of weeks at Easter. I remember spending the long train ride playing on the…